Tuesday, 10 July 2012

Just something you ought to know.....which CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and ABC won't discuss in public....the length of RomneyCare in Massachusetts and the length of ObamaCare.

RomneyCare takes up 145 pages. You....as weak as you think you are....can pick up the document with one hand.

ObamaCare, consists of a minimum of 2700 pages. If you lift weights on a regular basis.....you might be able to pick it up. If you added in the operational rules, the various tax instructions, and extra pages to explain the actual running of the law.....some medical experts say that the content goes up to 13,000 pages. Don't worry....you can't lift 13k pages.

So as you watch the dimwits on TV.....you might ask some stupid questions here. Did most Massachusetts political figures read the entire RomneyCare package? Yes, and they will admit it in various public forums. As of yet, not one single American Senator or Representative will admit to reading the ObamaCare law.

Did most of the Massachusetts political figures comprehend what they were voting for? So far, no one has ever stood up in Massachusetts and admitted non-comprehension.

Finally, failure comments in Massachusetts? No. In fact, they've come to admit that the majority of people who walked around with no health insurance prior to the act....could have afforded health insurance. This was one of the unusual discoveries after they put this law into effect. They simply chose not "waste" money on something they didn't think they needed.

The sad thing is that if people had taken most of RomneyCare (perhaps not all of it), and simply layered it across the US....you'd save hundreds of billions. But, that was never considered apparently.

There's an odd push being considered by the New York City political thinkers....pushing construction of tiny studio apartments. The idea is.....you make up a new building with a bunch of 300 square foot apartments (10 x 30 foot). Somehow, in the minds of political folks....this would be acceptable to not only single folks, but even some two-person households.

So you sit there and draw this out in front of you....then you start to scratch your head. If it were an empty 300 square foot.....this might work. But then you shove in a couch.....a chair....some kind of small kitchen.....a bed.....a dresser, and then there's nothing left. You walk in....and there's maybe four things you can do....and that's the limit of your home life.

I sat and pondered over this. It's like an episode of Seinfeld. You want a bed, but a bed won't fit. You spend all day at the furniture shop and nothing works. Then you discover something called a 'Murphy-bed', which pops down from the wall. It takes up wall space but it's the only thing that works. Then you want chairs, but real chairs don't work.....so you buy big fancy lawn chairs which collapse when not needed. You want a dining room table but the best you can do is this 3-foot circular table that two people can use....at best.

The people who might agree with this and be most happy? Engineers. They will sit for hours and hours....designing their "lego-ville" apartment....buying the right furniture....arranging things in a very precise way.....then invite four people over for a party to show everything. It'll be a proud achievement to boast over.

The sad thing here....is that after a decade of acceptance, then some idiot political figure will ask if a 200 square foot apartment might be acceptable, thus driving the engineer insane.

Some guys from the Doctor Patient Medical Association went out and talked up life in general with doctors. When they finished their questions with 699 doctors from across America.....they came to this unusual fact.....roughly eighty-three percent of these doctors had considered (briefly or intently)....to quit their medical practice since the health care reform law occurred.

Naturally, some guys from nifty news organizations like CNN, ABC, and CBS would avoid this topic. I doubt if Time or NewsWeak would ever want to write up a 12-page article over such substance. And the New York Times? Well....the Times would prefer to chat up on chocolate prices in Bolivia than pick up the discussion over how doctors feel about their future business situation.

Where is the bad rub? Most doctors are willing to accept Medicare patients and their ailments. In fact, it's fairly easy to convince some 66-year old gal that she has six different minor issues and needs regular drug usage to make it.....when she really just has arthritis and could survive life without more visits to the doctor or fancy drugs. You can rig up Medicare to pump up your profits, but it means that you really have to go out and lie on a consistent basis....not just once or twice a day.

With the new Medicare empire, and a wide assortment of poverty-class folks rolling right into Medicare.....you, the doctor, would have to accept them entirely and double up your six-issue package for another 300 patients who might wander into your operation. These are younger folks, and people who might not be quit as gullible as those old geezers. These folks might ask stupid questions and want you to give out a twenty-minute detailed explanation why their joint paint requires five different pills.

You, the doctor, eventually realize that doubling up on Medicare patients really isn't going to make your life easier.....it just makes it twice as likely some fraud investigator will step in and take you to court or the state medical association.

So now, you gaze over at the number of doctors in your region and ask if more doctors will suddenly appear....to pick up the added business. This is kinda like a county suddenly finding 4k new mobile homes in the area which need septic tanks, but no one has extra septic tanks to sell in that quantity, and no one is sure about who will dig the 4k new holes. Chinese doctors suddenly showing up? Maybe 3k Cuban doctors suddenly appearing in Florida to handle the new business situation? I kind of doubt it.

The issue here is you have to start worrying. If just three percent of the doctors across the nation make a decision to retire early (at age 55), and walk away in 2014.....then you have problems. Nothing is going to stop the retiring doctors from going away.

My guess in the end is this. We will watch seven percent of the doctor population retire by the end of 2014. Some folks will try to make it work in the first year, and eventually just pick up retirement magazines to review the best towns to retire to. The Senators and Congressmen will stand there....amazed that they never considered people would up and retire in masses. Several Senate hearings will occur where retired doctors will be forced to DC....in their straw-hats and flip-flops. The ABC and CNN folks will carry about sixty seconds of the hearing, and then return to afternoon soap operas. It's best not lay out these terrible details. Life in America is about to change.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.